Grading Texas

Budgetcutting choices are difficult and painful – for everyone, that is, except Gov. Rick Perry, who still jets around the country, bragging about all the “belttightening” in Texas. But one alleged “costsaving” proposal making the rounds of higher education administrators is so obviously unrealistic as to be silly.

Before I explain, I will digress for a moment.

On one hand, I have some sympathy for university regents and administrators who, like other public agency heads, have to try to provide important, critical services while their budgets continue to shrink. But my sympathy for higher education leaders also is limited because, although they know better, they continue to help the governor slash and burn because they don’t have the courage to tell him he is wrong.

All the regents on every university governing board are Perry appointees – many of them are major political contributors to the governor and all the university chancellors and presidents were hired, directly or indirectly, by Perry’s regents. It would be refreshing for a change to hear one of them tell the wouldbe emperor – loudly and publicly that his budgetary policies have no clothes. (If one already has, I missed it.)

Instead, they continue to cozy up to power and then have handwringing sessions among themselves, including one that just concluded in Dallas, where a number of possible costcutting steps were discussed, including an effort to get more students to earn their degrees in four years instead of five or six.

Raymund Paredes, the state higher education commissioner, even wants to tie part of a university’s budget to its ontime graduation rate.

There always will be slackers, or “career students,” who take longer than necessary to complete degree requirements. But, nowadays, many conscientious, hardworking students are being forced to take extra semesters to graduate because they simply can’t afford to complete their course requirements in four years.

These are students who have to juggle their coursework while they take jobs – sometimes more than one – to pay for increasing tuition and fees. And while regents continue to raise tuition because the Legislature won’t increase appropriations, the state continues to cut back on student financial aid. Instead of worrying about these young people taking an extra year or two to get their degrees, university administrators should be taking steps to accommodate them. Otherwise, many will simply give up.

It’s time to quit picking on the kids. They and their families already are doing their share to support higher education. It’s time for the governor and the Legislature to step up – and time for some university regents to demand it.

http://educationfrontblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/11/texaspublicuniversitiesbrac.html

Gov. Rick Perry may claim to be “fed up” with Washington, and he may selectively (and very rarely) reject federal funds, but mostly he and his legislative partners have eagerly accepted federal cash.

In fact, according to an item in Peggy Fikac’s column in the San Antonio ExpressNews, federal revenue was the biggest revenue source for state government in fiscal 2010. That’s the first time that has happened since at least 1978.

Citing the state comptroller’s annual cash report, Peggy noted that the state collected nearly $35.4 billion in state taxes during fiscal 2010 but received nearly $36.9 billion in federal money. The federal revenue presumably included a lot of onetime stimulus money, which won’t be resupplied in January when it’s time to start drafting the new state budget in the face of a huge revenue shortfall.

Although the stimulus money will be missing, legislative budget writers – despite all the antiWashington rhetoric of the recent political campaigns – will accept virtually every other federal dollar available, including federal Medicaid funds. Ideological talk is easy. Telling Texas voters that their federal income tax payments should be used to help balance another state’s budget – but not ours could be political suicide.

Educators, meanwhile, should keep in mind one important chunk of federal money that Texas so far hasn’t been able to obtain. This is the $830 million in emergency funds, approved by Congress last summer, designed to save educators’ jobs. Texas applied for its share, but Perry refused to comply with a congressional requirement and assure the feds that the state wouldn’t use the money to replace state education funds.

The money apparently hasn’t been lost, at least not yet, but who knows how many more political games may be played before the issue is finally resolved.

As are other groups preparing for battle during next year’s legislative session, TSTA obviously is very interested in the outcome of what is becoming a nastierbytheday race for the House speakership. But all we can do is wait and watch as the suddenly inflated Republican majority – egged on by rightwing activists – fights its unholy war over who is the most conservative.

Believe me, folks, we are keeping a safe distance from this one. But as a native of Speaker Joe Straus’ hometown, San Antonio, I find the speaker’s defense of his Republican credentials more than a little ironic.

Growing up during the days of oneparty, Democratic Texas, I didn’t know there were any Republicans in San Antonio until I learned of two, both named Straus. They were the speaker’s parents. They were what everyone else called Country Club Republicans, fiscal conservatives, and they were Republicans when it was still very unpopular politically in Texas to be one.

This was years before the emergence of the social conservative, Libertarian variety of Republicans, the genre which now is questioning Joe Straus’ conservative, Republican credentials, his ideological purity.

In truth, Straus has longer partisan roots than most of his detractors, including challenger Warren Chisum, who was elected to the House for years as a Democrat before figuring it was politically safe to switch parties.

Straus also has been a Republican longer than Gov. Rick Perry, who also was elected to the House as a Democrat before switching parties to seek statewide office.

Straus may need more than his pedigree, though, to overcome his rabid critics.

The term may sound a little harsh, but it is difficult to disagree with New York Times’ columnist Nicholas D. Kristof’s assessment that the United States has become something akin to a “banana republic.” He doesn’t mean a country headed by a tinpot dictator, but a country in which a tiny percentage of superwealthy individuals (certainly not schoolteachers, or even bigcity superintendents) have gobbled up a hugely disproportionate share of the wealth.

The richest 1 percent of Americans now pocket almost 24 percent of the income in this country, a significant increase from the almost 9 percent they took home in 1976, Kristof noted in a recent column. The huge disparity, he said, now gives the U.S.A an arguably more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics, such as Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

The longterm implications for the financial – and political – health of such a country aren’t good.

I don’t have comparable figures for Texas, but our state’s tradition of low workingclass wages, high incidence of poverty, large numbers of residents without health care and high dropout rate certainly don’t improve upon the national trend. Moreover, the situation in Texas will worsen next year under the draconian budgetary cuts promised by Gov. Perry and his new, largerthanlife conservative majority in the Texas Legislature.

The wealthiest Texans, many of whom financed Perry’s recent reelection campaign, will be only minimally impacted by the upcoming spending cuts in public schools and other public programs. They don’t earn government or teacher paychecks, they can afford the best health care and they can afford private schools for their children.

Ironically, the teachers, school bus drivers, cafeteria workers and other government employees who will lose their jobs because the governor and Republican lawmakers would rather cut services then raise taxes pay a higher tax load, proportionately, than the wealthiest Texans.

A heavy reliance on sales and property taxes and lack of a personal income tax give Texas one of the most regressive tax systems in the country. A regressive tax system is one that hits the poor and middle class harder, proportionately, than the wealthy.

According to the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy, the poorest 20 percent of Texans, those with annual incomes of less than $18,000, paid 12.2 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes in 2007, the most recent data available.

Those earning $18,000 to $31,000 paid 10.2 percent, and those earning $51,000 to $89,000 paid 7.2 percent. I am skipping some categories, but the higher the income level, the lower the percentage paid in state and local taxes.

The wealthiest 1 percent of Texans, those earning $463,000 or more per year, paid only 3 percent.

Just something else to think about as we contemplate the probable financial winners and losers from the upcoming legislative session.

Here is a link to Kristof’s column:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=2